An Australian economist, Roderick Campbell, has criticised the Australian government’s claims to be helping the Pacific with climate aid while subsidizing a key source of climate change – Australia’s coal industry.
Campbell has urged Pacific leaders to push for a moratorium on new coal mines in line with the 2015 Suva Declaration at this week’s Climate Action Pacific Partnership dialogue in Fiji.
Campbell, says, "the hypocrisy of Australia claiming to support the Pacific on climate while actually subsidising the root-cause problem is absolutely astonishing.
He says the Australian Government is not currently committed to Climate Action, as they profess. Instead they practise with great experience, the art of climate distraction.
He says this year, Pacific leaders have a once in a generation chance, at COP23 in Bonn, to once again push for a global fossil fuel moratorium.
He says even just having a topic on the agenda within the negotiations, sends a powerful message to countries like Australia that they cannot continue with these damaging policies.
